The Protocol Firm

The Firm Under AI asked how cheaper intelligence, execution and coordination change the economic boundary of the firm. It ended with the firm acting less as the direct operator of every task and more as a trust anchor and protocol governor.

This series begins there, and asks the operational question that one left open:

How does a firm operate when it governs more work than it directly executes?

The argument runs from economics to operating model to architecture. If work becomes programmable, governance has to become programmable too — but governance, specification and verification all cost something, so the goal is not maximum autonomy. It is the amount of delegation an organisation can economically afford.

Its subject is the firm. Not AI governance in isolation, and not agent architecture in isolation.